Star Trek Voyager Across the Unknown Endings Guide: How to Get Home
Space is a miserable void that actively wants you dead, and the developers of this game have given you seven different ways to fail, succeed, or completely rewrite the history of the U.S.S. Voyager.
If you just blindly click through dialogue boxes and hope for the best, you are going to get half your crew assimilated and strand the rest in the Delta Quadrant for another two decades. Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown is a brutal game of choices, and the final stretch is a massive gauntlet of branching paths.
Before you start aggressively save scumming to fix your mistakes, you need to understand that this game has a roguelite element with heavy randomization. Sectors play differently on each run or reset. This means the specific layout and events you encounter can shift, so your manual saves might load into slightly altered timelines. If you want to see everything without replaying the entire twenty hour campaign from scratch, you need to prepare your ship, manage your resources, and master the art of the manual save.
Sector Strategy and Critical Milestones
You cannot unlock the best endings if your ship is falling apart. The endgame requires massive stat checks and severe resource fees.
Power Management and Science Labs
Do not just leave your ship systems running on autopilot. You need to manage your power dynamically in combat, shifting energy to shields or weapons depending on the enemy's attack cycle. Outside of combat, your absolute first priority should be stacking Science Labs early. Accelerating the research tree is the only way to keep pace with the scaling difficulty of the enemy encounters.
The Sector 9 Warp Core Check
By the time you hit Sector 9, reaching a maxed out warp core is a concrete milestone. If you manage to max it out by this point, Voyager transitions from a struggling, fragile science vessel into a functional powerhouse capable of surviving the final three sectors.
The Sector 3 Trap (Jetrel and Faces)
The order in which you tackle side missions can permanently ruin your playthrough. In Sector 3, you must complete the "Jetrel" mission before you start the "Faces" mission. This sequence is mandatory because the game locks Regenerative Fusion technology behind that specific order. Inverting it not only costs you the tech, but it permanently blocks essential variants of B'Elanna Torres. It is a double consequence that will ruin specific playstyle goals.
The Canon Crew Resource Conflicts
If you want the true, canonical ending where everyone makes it back to Earth for the final cutscene, you cannot treat your crew like cannon fodder. You must reach Earth with Tom Paris, Harry Kim, Chakotay, Tuvok, B'Elanna Torres, The Doctor, Seven of Nine, and Icheb alive.
The Vidiian Medical Device Conflict
Getting everyone home sounds easy until you realize the game forces you into a massive resource conflict. If you split B'Elanna in "Faces" and want to keep both the Klingon and regular human versions, you need to use the Vidiian medical device. However, you also desperately need that exact same device later in Sector 6 ("Scorpion") to safely recruit Seven of Nine. If you burn the device on B'Elanna, saving Seven becomes a complete nightmare reliant on incredibly lucky dice rolls.
The Tuvix Dilemma
During the Sector 4 side mission "Tuvix", you will face the infamous transporter accident. If you merge Tuvok and Neelix into Tuvix and choose not to resolve the separation correctly, you will lose Tuvok permanently. Losing him instantly locks you out of the Canon ending.
The Ralik Dilemma and The Entry Fee (Sector 11)
When you reach the end of Sector 11, the game asks you to decide the fate of Ralik. This is the grand fork in the road. You must create a manual backup save right here. If you do not know how to back up your files, go read my manual save guide immediately.
Allying with Ralik opens five of the seven possible endings, but the entry fee is astronomical. To survive the paths he opens, you need to enter Sector 12 with either 100 Ex-Borg crew and 35 science technology, or a flat 400 pure combat power. Furthermore, the final checks demand incredibly sharp Command and Diplomacy attributes. You must invest heavily in those specific stats before you finish Sector 11, or you will fail the endgame arguments.
Path A: Allying With Ralik
For your first run through Sector 12, choose to disagree with Ralik's sacrifice and keep him alive. Once you push into Sector 12 and hit the point of no return, agree to enter the nebula and engage the Borg Cube. From here, you branch out:
Home, Hub And Holdfast: Choose not to destroy the hub and enter the aperture instead. Once inside, change your mind, retreat, and agree to take over the hub entirely using your assembled forces.
Welcome Home, Voyager: Reject the shortcut entirely and plan to destroy the hub. Condemn any crew sacrifices. Collect the Borg Vinculum, develop a pathogen, and wipe them out.
The Calm Before The Storm: Follow the exact same steps to destroy the hub, but when asked, agree to let someone sacrifice themselves. Pick a crew member to die and grab the Vinculum. At the absolute last second, give up. Let the autopilot fly you into the aperture. Admiral Janeway will save you, but you ultimately fail the mission.
Path B: Sacrificing Ralik
Reload your manual save from Sector 11 and agree to let Ralik sacrifice himself.
For The Greater Good: Engage the cube, plan to destroy the hub, and ask a crew member to sacrifice themselves. Develop your pathogen and drop it. This is where your pre-leveled stats matter. You have to pass three incredibly difficult Command and Diplomacy skill checks to actively defy Admiral Janeway's plan. If you lack the stats, you just look insubordinate and fail. If you succeed, you destroy the hub, but permanently strand Voyager in the Delta Quadrant for another sixteen years.
The Universal Endings
There are two specific endings that you can trigger regardless of what you did with Ralik in Sector 11. As long as you reach the Sector 12 point of no return, you can trigger these.
The Long Road Continues: When faced with the Borg nebula, you completely refuse to enter it entirely. Tell the crew that you will find another way home and fly the ship in the opposite direction. Choosing this path adds another sixteen years to your journey, but completely avoids the Borg confrontation.
Was It Worth It?: This is the blunt force trauma route. Enter the nebula, explicitly choose not to destroy the hub, and just fight the Borg Queen face to face to get home.
Specific Clear States
There are two conditional endings that require you to manage your ship perfectly.
The Starfleet Way: You have to complete the final sector without relying on Borg architecture. Load up your save right before the point of no return in Sector 12 and manually delete every single Borg room in your ship's layout, including the Borg tech from Sector 5. Complete any of the return home paths with a clean vessel.
The Canon Ending: As mentioned above, reach Earth via any successful path while ensuring Tom Paris, Harry Kim, Chakotay, Tuvok, B'Elanna Torres, The Doctor, Seven of Nine, and Icheb are all alive and present on the ship.
The Joke Ending
Stick To The Prime Directive: Right at the start of the game during Sector 1, you can choose to use the Caretaker's Array to instantly warp back to the Alpha Quadrant instead of destroying it to protect the Ocampa. The credits immediately roll and you pop the achievement. Reload your checkpoint, blow up the array, and actually play the game.
